{"id":544572,"date":"2026-03-16T18:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T18:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/544572\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T18:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T18:38:08","slug":"harshit-rana-set-to-miss-bulk-of-ipl-season-after-knee-surgery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/544572\/","title":{"rendered":"Harshit Rana set to miss bulk of IPL season after knee surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.espncricinfo.com\/team\/kolkata-knight-riders-335971\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kolkata Knight Riders<\/a> (KKR) fast bowler <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espncricinfo.com\/cricketers\/harshit-rana-1312645\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Harshit Rana<\/a> is set to miss a major part of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espncricinfo.com\/series\/ipl-2026-1510719\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">IPL 2026<\/a> as he recovers from the knee surgery he underwent in February. ESPNcricinfo has learned that Rana, who suffered a knee strain during India&#8217;s T20 World Cup warm-up match against South Africa, is doing his rehab with no firm date of return earmarked by BCCI medical team yet.<\/p>\n<p>If Rana misses the entire IPL, which begins on March 28, it will be the second major tournament he misses in a row after he had been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espncricinfo.com\/story\/india-allrounder-harshit-rana-in-doubt-for-t20-world-cup-due-to-injury-1522515\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ruled out of the T20 World Cup<\/a>, which India went on to win.<\/p>\n<p>ESPNcricinfo has learned that Rana, who won Best International Debutant at the BCCI awards on Sunday, suffered a ligament strain in his right knee after he pulled out having delivered just one over in the warm-up game. He was replaced in the main tournament by Mohammed Siraj, who played just one match, India&#8217;s opening game against USA.<\/p>\n<p>Editor&#8217;s Picks<a name=\"&amp;lpos=story:editorspicks:inline:1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com.au\/cricket\/story\/_\/id\/48194724\/zimbabwe-bowler-blessing-muzarabani-pulls-psl-2026-joins-kkr-ipl\" class=\"img-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1523850_1296x1296.jpg&#038;w=130&#038;h=130&#038;scale=crop&#038;location=center.jpeg\" width=\"65\" height=\"65\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>KKR will also be without left-arm quick Mustafizur Rahman for the IPL season after the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espncricinfo.com\/story\/ipl-2026-bcci-asks-kkr-to-release-mustafiqur-rahman-from-their-squad-because-of-recent-developments-1517878\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">BCCI &#8220;instructed&#8221; them to release him<\/a> from their squad in a climate of strained geopolitical relations between India and Bangladesh in December-January. As KKR were allowed to bring in a replacement, they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espncricinfo.com\/story\/zimbabwe-bowler-blessing-muzarabani-pulls-out-of-psl-2026-joins-kkr-in-ipl-1527885\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">signed Zimbabwe quick Blessing Muzarabani<\/a>, who gave up his deal with Islamabad United in the PSL last week.<\/p>\n<p>KKR&#8217;s current fast-bowling options also include Matheesha Pathirana, Vaibhav Arora, Akash Deep, Umran Malik, Kartik Tyagi, and allrounders Cameron Green and Ramandeep Singh. There were also concerns about Pathirana&#8217;s fitness after he was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espncricinfo.com\/story\/sri-lanka-fast-bowler-matheesha-pathirana-ruled-out-of-t20-world-cup-2026-1524883\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ruled out of the T20 World Cup<\/a> with a calf strain he picked up against Australia in the first round. It was expected at that time, a month ago, that his IPL availability was not going to be under threat.<\/p>\n<p>KKR&#8217;s opening game is on March 29 against Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede Stadium. In the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espncricinfo.com\/story\/ipl-2026-to-kick-off-with-rcb-vs-srh-game-on-march-28-at-m-chinnaswamy-stadium-in-bengaluru-1527318\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">schedule announced so far<\/a>, they also take on Sunrisers Hyderabad, Punjab Kings and Lucknow Super Giants, all at home and in evening games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) fast bowler Harshit Rana is set to miss a major part of IPL 2026&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-544572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}